Murder and Mayhem in ‘See How They Run’ [Review]
Tom George’s See How They Run, both an Agatha Christie spoof and dissension, is a prime genre springboard. With its more-violent-than-most death scenes, metatextual awareness, and searing (though brief) indictment of contemporary true crime culture, it’s a star-studded whodunnit that achieves cross-appeal nirvana. An exceptionally qualified cast makes See How They Run one of the funniest movies of the year. Plus, there are enough genre wrinkles thrown in to satisfy horror fans whose appetite was first bated by the machinations of murder mysteries.
Several horror juggernauts, for what it’s worth, amount to whodunnits. Giallo maestro Dario Argento’s filmography is black-gloved, knife-wielding Christie. The likes of Scream, Friday the 13th, and Diabolique sway to the whodunnit rhythms Christie helped popularize. Still, Christie didn’t invent the whodunnit. Several others (e.g. Barbara Neely and Gillian Flynn) have updated the crime genre with distinct points of view. Yet, Christie and the subgenre are part and parcel with one another in popular culture. See How They Run both celebrates and interrogates the enduring appeal of Christie’s mysteries, especially the real-life, long-running West End play The Mousetrap.
A wide shot of London’s West End opens See How They Run. Adrian Brody’s Leo Köpernick delivers non-diegetic, metatextual riffs on the whodunnit subgenre writ large. “It’s a whodunnit. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” he remarks as the camera pans through a celebration of The Mousetrap’s 100th successful show. Köpernick plans to direct a filmic adaptation of the stage play. Unfortunately, an unknown assailant bludgeons him with skis and a sewing machine as the party gets into swing. Killed in full Mario Bava, Blood and Black Lace style.
Sam Rockwell’s bumbling, alcoholic Inspector Stoppard and Saoirse Ronan’s naive Constable Stalker are on the case, gifted a certified bouquet of likely suspects. There’s Ruth Wilson’s Petula Spencer, a theater owner with a vested interest in keeping the stage play successful. In addition, there’s Reece Shearsmith’s John Woolf (a real figure), a man with more secrets than greenlit productions. And Harris Dickinson’s Richard Attenborough (yes, that Richard Attenborough) seems just a bit too affable. David Oyelowo (trading in some questionable queer characterization), Shirley Henderson, and Pearl Chanda round out the cast, not counting several additional would-be victims or killers.
In a lot of ways, See How They Run plays out as a tamer Scream 3. It is abounding with scores of deadpan takedowns of London’s theater culture and Hollywood’s Golden Age as it trundles toward its decline. Directors are blacklisted, promises shatter, and contracts drip with usurious clauses. Inspector Stoppard and Constable Stalker have plenty to work with as they investigate their way through London’s West End.
Early beats play out as expected. The two investigators interrogate potential suspects as See How They Run flashes back to give audiences a complete vantage point. Where the likes of Knives Out and Gone Girl have given modern audiences unreliable narrators, playing with filmic convention to subvert expectations and cleverly muddle motives, See How They Run plays its mystery as straight as the classics. There’s no visual deception, no reason to not take every flashback or reveal as the bonafide truth. The parodic elements and cast strength keep See How They Run consistently engaging. Yet, the central mystery itself feels like peripheral window dressing, only picking up steam when another body is dropped.
In its third act, however, See How They Run does arrive at a pretty remarkable conclusion. Less the who and more the why, there is a smattering of a good idea within its ultimate reveal. Itself an interrogation of not just Christie’s body of work, but the nature of mysteries in general, See How They Run utilizes its true-to-life setting and characters for some surprising ethos. British absurdism keeps it in focus, and it’s enviably bold to see what amounts to a love letter dismantling the myth of its subject.
See How They Run is an outrageous delight. Saoirse Ronan is as inimitably delightful as ever. Sam Rockwell proves he’s talented enough to do this in his sleep. While the mystery itself falters, See How They Run’s empathetic ethos elevates it above just another murder mystery parody. See How They Run is wickedly funny, sharply played, and stunningly designed. Tom George lovingly crafts some focused, murder mystery-lite. Come for the murder, stay for everything else.
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See How They Run
Summary
See How They Run’s surprisingly sharp insights and pair of phenomenal leads render it more than just another whodunnit.
